The One With the Crushing
by Sweetheart Seer
Summary: He doesn't mean to keep staring at her, really. But he does, and honestly, his crush on Lily Evans is the least of his problems. (A part of the St. Albus's verse)


"You're like, the worst pillow," Sirius announces, much to James chagrin, as he lies sprawled across James' lap- doing a lovely job of ignoring his incessant protesting.

Remus has tucked himself into the corner between the two buildings, his back to the wall, lounging. Peter's crouched on his knees, rifling through his satchel, trying to find the pack of licorice he had tucked away that morning.  
"Get off me, you fucking idiot," James grunts, trying his best to push his traitorous and alarmingly heavy best mate off his legs before he loses feeling completely. "How much do you even weigh?" He adds in exasperation, giving one more shove before Sirius topples over, laughing.

"All muscle Jaime boy, all muscle," he announces, flexing his arms. But this is an utter blatant lie, and James knows this for a fact, considering he lives with the prat and is rather well acquainted with both his dietary and exercise habits. And if he had to provide a description for both, they would be "teeth-rotting" and "non-existent," in that order.

Beside him, Remus snorts, glancing up from his book, a joint nestled between his fingers. Maybe it's rather stupid to smoke pot on campus- no, it definitely is, but if anyone could manage to get away with it, James thinks, it's Remus.

"Oh, I'm sure it is. All you posh boys are solid walls of muscle," he says, drily, a smirk nestling into the corner of his mouth. Sirius sits up, a bit of grass caught in his hair, lips turned down in a pout.

"C'mon, Buttercup, don't be like that," he whines, his hand curling around a clump of grass, a handful he proceeds to yank up. Remus narrows his eyes.

"I will shove my foot up your arse, Black," he manages to get the words out before he's hit in the face with a clod of dirt and grass. He throws down his book and gingerly sets his joint aside and then they are wrestling and Peter is commentating, his licorice free from his bag and in his hand and James is simply laughing because honestly, there was nowhere else he would rather be.

He turns his attention away from the grappling pair, though very much aware of their scuffle still going on. ("You know, I would love if you shoved any part of you up my arse, though your foot is not at the top of the list-" Sirius is violently cut off as Remus jabs him in the eye with a half-bitten stick of licorice stolen from Peter's hand.) And then he sees her and his mind goes a bit fuzzy, like the world without his glasses. Because _fuck_.

"Who's that?" He asks, quietly, eyes trained on the girl walking next to Snivellus, heading towards the Stevens Building. Remus and Sirius pause, frozen mid-fight, and Peter swivels his head, licorice between his lips like a cigarette.

She's got hair too red to be real and her skirt is at least an inch shorter than regulation and her socks are slouching towards her ankles and her pale legs seem to stretch for miles and her shirt is slightly rumpled in the back and she's got some sort of clip in her hair and he can't stop staring. He's seen pretty girls, but pretty and _pretty_ are two different things and she's a very different thing from either. He really, _really_ can't stop staring.

It's Remus that speaks up, sounding slightly strangled, which very well could have had something to do with the fact that Sirius is sitting on his chest.

"Oh, that's Lily, Evans, I think. She started this term. I sit by her in Lit." He pinches Sirius's thigh with one hand and reaches for his joint with the other, seeming resigned to his new life with Sirius mounted on his sternum. James decides he'd give it another minute or so before he bothers to shove Sirius again. Remus is _fragile_ , after all, but he hadn't introduced him to her and honestly, what type of mate did that!

"Why haven't you introduced me yet? I thought we were mates," James exclaims, the thoughts bursting out into the open, not pulling his eyes from _Lily_ until she disappears into Stevens. Remus let out a scoffing sort of sound.

"I'm sorry that I didn't think to introduce a practical stranger to you, how could I have been so thoughtless," Remus drawls. He makes a sputtering sound of protest when Sirius plucks his joint from between his fingers and takes a puff. "That shit's expensive, you utter arse!"

"I'll buy you more, don't get all moony on me, Buttercup," Sirius assures him, getting another pinch for the nickname. Peter says something, mentioning he knows her from Binns' class, but he's already a thousand miles away, still staring at the door of the Stevens Building.

James starts seeing her everywhere. He notices she has her study period in Glendor, which means she's technically a part of his house. (How the fuck had he not noticed her before?) He notices that she sits with Mary and Dorcas in the pavilion for lunch on some days, but on others she's tucked away in Stevens with Snivellus. He notices she always has some sort of clip or headband or sparkly tie in her hair. He always notices whenever she's around.

This is what leads to him getting a football to the face.

Due to an upcoming match between the Glendor Lions and the Rawlings Eagles, James had started taking advantage of every free period, leading the team in practice after practice, much to their chagrin and utter annoyance.

And it starts out smoothly. The new plays are running well, Fenwick has stopped staring at his feet as he kicks the ball. Vance is making sure she keeps her hair out of her face while playing goalie. (The team all remembers the match the year before with shudders and pats of sympathy to Emmeline's previously broken arm.) The Prewetts' have perfected the new move they suggested. Everything is running well. Surprisingly well. Alarmingly well. Suspiciously well.

James splits the team and they start a quick match. That's when he picks up a flash of red settling into the stands by the pitch. He's staring, not that he's meaning to stare, of course, but fucking Fenwick is looking down at his feet and he doesn't hear Sirius yelling at him to "look the fuck up!" And then he's got a football hitting him square in the face. He sort of blacks out a bit after that.

When he comes to, he's in Pomfrey's office with a cold compress on his cheek and he feels like his nose is twisted completely the wrong way and there's a split in his vision- no, that's just a crack in his glasses. Groaning, he twists himself into an almost upright position, his head pounding, a jackhammer having its way with his skull.

"How long was I out?"

"Less than fifteen minutes. Really just long enough for me to carry your dumb arse-"

Nurse Pomfrey makes a tutting sound. "Language, Mr. Black!" Sirius grins.

"Sorry Poppy," he throws a wink in her direction and gets a tongue depressor to the side of the head. Before he can go on a tirade about being abused, James groans.

"Can you please stop all of," he takes a moment to half-blindly gesture towards Sirius, "that?" Sirius pouts and proceeds to cuff him upside the head.

"No hitting my patients, Mr. Black!" Pomfrey scolds once more, pinching her lips together. Sirius lets out a loud huff, the dramatic wanker, and sinks down in the plastic chair, his hands held up in a gesture of defeat. Or at least James hopes it's a gesture of defeat. He doubts his brain can handle any more jostling.

"How bad is it?" He asks, directing his question towards the licensed medical professional, and most certainly not Sirius who is already lamenting his previously symmetrical features ("I'll see if we can find you a bell tower, Quasimodo." "Honestly, I escaped inbreeding only to end up with this?" "Can we start calling you the Phantom of the Opera? You're a baritone aren't you? Can you play the organ?" "We already knew I was the good looking one, but now you're making me pull all the weight and I hardly think that's fair.")

Madam Pomfrey rolls her eyes, but makes no attempts to extract Sirius. "The swelling should go down soon, and your nose isn't broken, but it will be sore for a while. Next time, pay more attention to the ball, Mr. Potter," she adds before disappearing from the little room and into her main office. James groans.

"Did Lil-"

"If you're about to ask me if Evans saw, yes, she did."

"Did she-"

"Laugh? No, but she stopped Snivellus from laughing if that helps any."

"Snivellus was-"

"Yes, he was with her. If you hadn't started making heart eyes in her fucking direction you may have noticed that." Sirius pats his arm before throwing his own legs up onto the cot, draped across James'. "I called Mum. She sounded a bit panicked but I assured her that you hardly have any brain cells left to lose and that she doesn't need to worry-"

James hits him in the face with a pillow.

Summer hols came and went faster than he had expected or wanted, for that matter. They passed by in a blur of sweets and his mum's cooking and the Marauders ("shut _up_ , Peter, it's a bloody cool name") lazing about his living room and playing matches of pick-up football in his yard and getting far too stoned in their old tree house and egging the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black and when Walburga ("I don't feel right calling her Wal-bitch-a, Sirius," Peter mumbles) ventured out onto the front steps, egging her too. It was spent being stupid teenage boys, in the most eloquent and accurate of terms. But then it's over as soon as it started and maybe he's a bit tanner and maybe a bit less in shape but, fuck, if it wasn't fun.

James isn't all that upset to be back in class again, and maybe it's because it's much easier to pine over a certain redhead when he can see her daily, or maybe he just values his fucking education, thank you, Sirius. And no, he won't doodle her initials in his notebook, he isn't pathetic (or at least he won't get caught).

"I'm not fucking with you, McKinnon, I drank an entire bottle of shitty wine by myself in one sitting," Sirius is hollering, perhaps a bit too loudly for a prep school hallway. Remus is rolling his eyes and Peter is trying to remember just how that joke went when James walks smack dab into a wall of grease. His eyes narrow behind his (finally fixed) glasses.

"Watch where you're going, Snivellus," he snaps, corners of his mouth turning down. Snape glowers.

"You don't own the hallway, Potter," he retorts, sharply, before pushing through their ranks.

"No, but I own some fucking shampoo," James calls over his shoulder, reaching up to push a hand through his hair as he says it, as if to solidify his point. The words have slipped out of his mouth when he sees her, a frown on her face, catching up to Snape. Her hair's shorter, he notices, showing a pale bit of her neck and a new smattering of freckles. Her cheeks are flushed pink, sunburn, he realizes, and she's got little sunflower studs in her ears.

Sirius is laughing and so is Peter and Remus seems amused at the very least, but he can still feel the disapproval in her gaze boring into the back of his head. He ruffles his hair again and tries to ignore the voice in the back of his head. Snape had started it, after all.

He's rather successful at ignoring anything and everything that rhymes with Meverus Mape for the rest of the week, at least until the convocation.

Sirius sits next to him in the auditorium, gripping his hand, his jaw set too tightly, his eyes going too dark as Minnie speaks, solemnly, about the incident at Riddle Academy. It was only a week into the new school year and three students had already engaged in a racially charged hate crime against a fellow student which led to an attempted suicide. ("That sort of behavior will not be tolerated at St. Albus's.")

They're in their section of the grounds, tucked away between Glendor and Hufton. After four years of gathering there, no one else bothers. Sirius has his head in Remus's lap, biting so hard on his lower lip between drags of his cigarette that James is afraid he's going to draw blood. Pete's keeping a lookout for any staff members because _technically_ they are skipping class and _technically_ Sirius shouldn't be smoking on school grounds and _technically_ he's underage anyway but _technically_ none of them can even manage to give a fuck because there is shit worse than skipping class.

No one has said it, but they know. His brother and cousins all go to Riddle. His brother and his incredibly bigoted cousins. James bets it was Bella. According to Sirius she tortured fucking animals when they were kids, and worrisomely, he doesn't think he was exaggerating the claim. Sirius has smoked through three cigarettes when Mulciber shows up, Avery, Rosier, Carrow, and _Snape_ in tow.

"Hear your cousin tried to do us all a favor, Black," Mulciber begins, his voice hard, sharp, carelessly pointed. James grits his teeth but Sirius is staring at Remus's knuckles, a fourth, unlit smoke between his fingers. When he doesn't react, Mulciber continues. "At least one of you has the balls to do something about all these dirty fucking-" He's staring at James now, the venom clear in his tone, the goddamn slur sliding off his tongue. And then Sirius is on his feet, shoving Mulciber into the wall, hard.

"Shut. The. Fuck. Up," the words come out in a growl, Sirius's arm pressing against his throat. Remus slowly rises to his feet, not quite pulling him back, his hand wavering by his side. James is seeing red or blue or he doesn't know because he isn't quite seeing anything anymore.

Mulciber smirks, despite Sirius pressing harder, teeth bared in a snarl. "What are you going to do, faggot?" He spits at him as he says the word and Sirius jerks back, Remus jerks forward, Peter jerks up, and James can't remember who throws the first punch.


End file.
